Marriage Record of John Paul Silva and Rosa Soares

I have had a major find today.  Ancestry.com’s hints found the marriage record for John Paul Silva and Rosa Soares.  I am certain that this is their marriage record because the facts corroborate with information that I have researched.  For example the record states this is John’s second marriage.  The parents of the couple also mostly match. And by mostly I am alluding to the major find.  Rosa Soares’ parents have proven to be a brick wall in my research efforts.  Especially that I had the name of her mother as Clara Delae (from Rosa’s death certificate).  This has always not been strange because Delae is not a Portuguese name.  Well in this marriage record Clara’s surname is Nóbrega.

John Paul Silva’s Naturalization Record

I took advantage of Ancestry.com’s free search of their immigration records today and I found John Paul Silva’s naturalization record from their U.S. Naturalization Record Indexes, 1791-1992.

I am very confident that it is my ancestor because the address matches the address of census records.

Searched 1940 Census for John Silva

I searched the 1940 Census for my great grandfather.  I knew the enumeration district the family was in during the 1930 census.  Using this information I was able to page through the scanned images and I found him.  The link is here: http://1940census.archives.gov/search/?search.result_type=image&search.state=CA&search.county=Alameda+County&search.city=Oakland&search.street=20th+Av&search.cross_street=Foothill+Blvd#filename=m-t0627-00436-00877.tif&name=61-202&type=image&state=CA&index=16&pages=37&bm_all_text=Bookmark

It is interesting because it looks like his 14 year old son was the respondent.  I was extra lucky because my great grandfather was one of the few who were asked supplementary questions.

I am very excited by this find and will need to take some time to parse the document.

Searched for Guilherme da Silva’s Death Date

I spent a little time searching for Guilherme da Silva’s death date.  I know that he arrived in San Francisco, California in 1918 with his wife and children.  One of his sons was living in Oakland in 1930, but wasn’t living with his parents. 

I searched Ancestry.com’s California Death Index, 1940-1997 using his immigrant name of William Silva.  This did not return any matches so I expanded my search to all birth, marriage & death records on Ancestry.com.  This also yielded no results.  A more thorough search needs to occur trying other name variants.

Portuguese Immigrants and the World War I Draft

I have previously posted here an examples of Portuguese immigrant who had to register for the draft in World War I.  Now as I previously explained it was a shock to find this draft card because he was not an American citizen.  Ancestry.com explains in their “interesting facts” section under the source for their World War I Draft Card Database that:

Non-citizens were required to register but were not subject to induction into the American military.

So although John Paul Silva registered, he would not have been subject to induction.  I found that to be interesting!

Concerning the origin of the da Silva surname

I have taken a brief pause to search out the history of the da Silva surname: where did it come from and what does it mean? It has been an interesting search in which I have learned a lot. I do get a sense that finding the true answer to these questions is difficult if not impossible. It is obscured by the lack of conclusive historical documents on the subject.

The meaning is clear. According to this newsgroup posting the name was derived from the Latin word “hisses” which means forest. It is possible that people took the name da Silva because they lived or worked in or near a forest. It is unclear if the meaning is related to the origin however. It is interesting to note that Wikipedia claims that Silva is the most common surname in Portugal and Brazil.

Another newgroup posting explains the Silva name has a noble context. Responding to a question where the surname originated the posting states, “What GENEALOGISTS generally say are things as the following (addapted [sic] from ‘Armorial Lusitano’)

<<Dom Guterre Alderete was the ‘senhor’ (lord? squire?) of ‘torre de Silva’ (Silva tower), in Alderete village, near Valenca (Valenc,a [sic]) town, Minho province, north of Portugal. He was son of Dom Pelaio Guterres and gr-son of Dom Guterre Pais. He was in the conquest of Coimbra by king Ferdinand I from Castilla (1017-1065), who later was also king of Lion. His son was Dom Paio Guterres DA SILVA, married twice and all his sons used the DA SILVA name.>>”

Searching for information on Dom Guterre Alderete was interesting. With the help of website translators I was able to learn quite a bit. For example, I searched for Alderete on Google Maps and found the map posted to the left of this text. It is centered on Alderete, a city in northern border or Portugal. This coincides with the newsgroup posting (citing Amorial Lusitano) stating that Minho province – where the Silva tower and Alderete are located – is in Northern Portugal. I noticed that there is a city in Portugal named Silva on the map that is about two inches to the south west of Alderete. Did the city get the name from the family, or did the family get the name from the tower which got the name from something else (like the forest)?

This is why I am not sure that Dom Guterre Alderete is the father of the surname. It could be possible that people (common people that is) had the surname da Silva before it was made noble. It is hard to see if this is true, because the historical documents usually chronicle the lives of the famous. The common folk are ever present but unobservable. It is possible that my family are descendants from this noble line. It is also possible that that we are not. The research that I have done to this point has neither confirmed nor negated any links. I, however, looked more into Silva tower and the more noble history (since it was easier to find). I found a blog posting that had pictures of the tower. I would like to recommend a few sites (which need translation if you don’t read portuguese). They are: O MORGADO E A CASA DA SILVA, and Câmara Municipal de Valença.

There are other explanations concerning the origin of the name. One that is found in newsgroups and websites such as this one, is that the da Silva surname is Sephardic. This group of Jews found on the Iberian Peninsula had this name. The author of the website explains: “Because Jewish Sephardic names are often so ancient, discovering the origins and meanings of these names can be of interest. I have elected to skip Jewish names that were simply adopted from existing spanish names (Rodriguez, Henriquez, etc.) because I cannot provide a meaning to them of Jewish interest other than that they were adopted from Spanish names – usually their Catholic godfather when forcibly converted. Many of these families reverted to Judaism when able to do so.” Perhaps this is reading too much into the website, but because da Silva is found in the list the author thinks it is Jewish in origin and not an adopted name.

I will be devoting some more time in the future to continue this research into the origin of the da Silva family name.